Just trying to pay tuition? Liar!

That is my favorite line from Pitbull’s Go Girl, a ridiculously flat and meaningless song about picking up legitimate prostitutes at a bar (or, in Mr. Bull’s words, “bagging that off of Myspace”). I hear it on the radio so many times on the way to school, but I’d always just roll my eyes at the patheticism (that is a real word form now on) and baseness of the rap.

Well, turns out the Bull wasn’t off base at all. “More women needing cash go from jobless to topless,” reads the headline of a recent news article from the Associated Press. Gentleman’s clubs like Pink Monkey and Sin City are rolling in the dough as college-degreed, previously white-collar-jobbed girls are rolling out the goodies.

Exactly what kind of numbers are we talking about? A “dancer” will earn a couple thousand dollars on a good night. This translates to $100,000-$300,000 a year. The club isn’t the only venue girls are turning to – adult movies and porno magazines are getting more and more responses to job listings as the economy continues flushing itself down the toilet.

The transition to the nightclub scene isn't always a smooth one — from learning to dance in five-inch heels to dealing with the jeers of some customers. "It is like giving a speech, but instead of imagining everyone naked, you're the one who's naked," Rebecca Brown, 29, said.

First of all, dancing in five-inch heels is not a learned skill, it’s a talent. Take it from someone who wore these to photograph a fashion show on a three-step ladder barely wide enough to balance me barefooted. Not only was it the first time I wore them, they were ½ size too big. It’s a gene specific to the double X chromosome pairing, and in the words of Mary Lewis, ‘if you don’t got it, you in trouble’.

Second, well gee, maybe you should have thought of the uh-oh-naked-awkwardness thing before you sent your bra flying onto a bald sweaty head in the front row. Though this time, imagining everyone naked will actually help you, since you’d feel more like you belong. The only problem with that is that once you start feeling more comfortable in a room of naked horny bastards, something’s wrong.

I guess the main question here is whether it’s justifiable. “[In this economy,] desperate measures are becoming far more acceptable," said Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist who's had “adult” clients. That may be true, but how desperate are you going to get before you’re hovering over a middle-aged fat man with boobs saying Me love you long time? (In case you didn’t know, the phrase is a stereotype of Vietnamese prostitutes who’ve been shipped to the US as young girls who couldn’t really speak English).

Personally, I’d rather earn half of what they do but at a respectable job. A lot of girls may like to get freaky and fool around every once in a while, but I’d never choose that as a career. But hey, the one thing ethics class taught me is that morality is subjective – everyone has their own set of rules. Perhaps these women plan to find mommy-friendly jobs after the economy improves. Until then, they can hang out with guys like Pitbull – after all, he is just “that that raw”.